Divorce Lowers Risk of Suicide for Women in India and China

Women cross a street in front of the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi. Photographer: Brian Sokol/Bloomberg

June 22 (Bloomberg) -- Suicide rates in India are lower
among divorced and widowed women and higher among those with
more education, according to a new study that has found
parallels to trends in China.

Suicide takes nearly as many young women’s lives in India
as complications from pregnancy and childbirth, according to a
study led by Vikram Patel at the London School of Hygiene and
Tropical Medicine and published today in the Lancet journal. The
study used data collected by the Registrar General of India for
deaths between 2001 and 2003 and extrapolated those findings to
estimate suicide figures for 2010.

The World Health Organization estimates there are almost
900,000 suicides worldwide every year, with India and China
accounting for 49 percent in 2004, the latest available figure.
Lower risk for divorced women has also been reported in China
and may reflect changing perceptions of what is “an acceptable
way of life” as women become more educated, Patel said.

As in China, suicide is more prevalent among young women
than young men, a trend that is reversed in developed countries.

“What’s interesting is how similar these findings are
between China and India and how different these two Asian
countries are from the developed world,” Patel said in an
interview. In India, suicide trends may reflect “the clash
between education and the traditional value system.”

India Data

Past studies have pointed to social difficulties, marital
conflict, domestic violence and depression as the leading causes
of suicide among women in India, Patel said.

For the overall population, the Registrar General found
that about 3 percent of surveyed deaths in people ages 15 and
older were attributed to suicide. That translates to about
187,000 suicide deaths in India in 2010. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death of young people in India, the authors
said in the paper.

The Registrar’s survey is the first to systematically
obtain information on the causes of deaths in India, Patel said.
As suicide is a crime in India, the only other available data
from the National Crime Records Bureau probably reflects
underreporting.

In China, studies showed that mental illness didn’t afflict
about a third of people who committed suicide and two-thirds of
people who attempted suicide, which contrasts with findings in
high-income countries where suicidal behavior is almost always
associated with mental illness, Michael Phillips of Emory
University and Hui Cheng of Shanghai Mental Health Centre wrote
in a commentary accompanying the Lancet publication. Low
socioeconomic status and divorce are also risk factors for
suicide in developed countries, they said.

National Differences

“These cross-national and cross-regional differences have
major implications for prevention,” Phillips and Cheng said.

In India, poisoning, mostly from pesticides used in
agriculture, was the leading method of suicide in both men and
women, Patel said. Restricting access to these pesticides and
improving the availability of mental health services are
possible approaches for prevention, he said.

The study was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of
Health, the University of Toronto and the Wellcome Trust.

Suicide rates for young men between aged 19 to 30 are
falling in England, Australia, China and the U.S., according to
a review of past studies led by Alexandra Pitman at University
College London, also published in the Lancet today. These
national trends mask shifting suicide rates by geographic
region, socio-economic status and ethnic origin, they said.

Rural Deaths

In England and Australia, suicide rates are rising among
young men in rural areas and falling in urban areas. Among
ethnic groups, those with the highest suicide rates are white
men in South Africa, first-generation Eastern European and
Caribbean immigrants to England and Wales, and indigenous
populations of Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the
U.S.

Factors that may affect rates of suicide in young men
include unemployment, social deprivation, and media reports of
suicide, Pitman said in the paper.

“This review underlines the importance of the development
of regionally and nationally tailored approaches to reducing
suicide,” she said.